ICC Printer Profile Download

By popular request, Costco UK have produced .icc files for every warehouse. These help professional photographers make the best use of our very high quality silver halide printers.

Please Note:

If you are not already familiar with colour management, don't worry - just ignore this page and continue to place your orders with the photolab as usual and our photolabs will automatically optimise your photos for you.

This page and the profiles are only relevant to photographers who:

1. Are experienced in the field of colour management

This is a very specialist field. Regrettably, it is not practical to train our lab staff to the level that they are in effect training photographers without increasing the costs of our services - which we do not want to do! If you have any questions, please lookup some of the many tutorials available on the internet, get a book on the topic, or purchase a training package from a specialist such as www.ColourConfidence.com in the UK.

Please do NOT ask warehouse staff to help you as unfortunatley they are not able to. Colour management is one of the topics where if you don't know how to use it, you probably don't need to be using it.

2. Are already using a colour calibrated monitor

If your computer monitor is not already correctly calibrated, then everything that appears on it is inaccurate - and there is no point considering the output printers ICC profile unless this is first correct. There are many monitor calibration systems out there - again, Colour Confidence are a good source.

3. Have appropriate PC/Mac and supporting software

Not every application supports ICC profiles - you will need to consult with your software provider's information. Common software which does however includes Photoshop, Gimp, InDesign etc.

Key Facts

If you have read (1), (2), and (3) above and think "yes - that's me", then here are some key facts to assist:

Our profiles have been professionally created and daily checks are made on the mini-labs to ensure their calibration remains consistent.

The profiles are distributed to help professional photographers understand the gamut of each mini-lab and to ensure that their images exclusively contain colours within the mini-lab's colour space.

Our mini-labs operate in the sRGB colour space. Work should therefore be submitted only in sRGB colourspace - NOT CMYK or Adobe RGB.

The best format to supply work for printing at is as a 300dpi JPG, saved with 100% quality. Some photographers default to supplying work at several thousand DPI, as uncompressed .tif files. In 'real world' terms, this is unnecessary for a professional silver halide process - feel free to print one image each way and see what we mean.

Example use in Photoshop - intended as a reminder, not a tutorial:

1. Download, unzip and install the lab specific profile in the following location:

Mac OS/OS X:/Library/ColorSync/Profiles

Windows 10/8.1/7: Right click on the .icc file and click 'install profile'

Windows XP/2000:\Windows\system32\spool\drivers\color

2. Edit your image as usual within photoshop, and save the file.

Do all this work in a standard working colour space - we recommend sRGB. Do NOT try to use a specific output profile - you are currently working on an image that can be sent for printing to any printer.

Then copy your source, original image somwhere to separate it from the image you are intending to print at Costco.

3. Profile conversion:

Optionally, you can preview using "Proof view" within photoshop before conversion. This helps you confirm how the output image will look, and that there are no colours "out of gamut". To do this, go to View > Proof Setup > Custom within Photoshop. You should select the Costco profile for the lab you are printing at in the "device to simulate" menu, and select "Rendering Intent: Relative Colorimetric" with "Black point Compensation" on. "Preserve RGB Numbers" should be off.

To do the colour conversion, go to:

Image/Mode/Convert to Profile (for Photoshop 7 or CS) or

Edit/Convert to Profile (for Photoshop CS2)

Then select the destination profile (make sure you select the lab you are sending the work to) and ensure "Intent > Relative Colorimetric" is set.

Save the work as sRGB JPG without any embedded profiles.

4. Order online, and collect instore

Ensure you confirm in the comments box that you are a pro-photographer who is submitting the work having pre-profiled it.